Press Complaints Commission receive 32 complaints over Daily Mail Miliband article
An article published (twice) by the Daily Mail accusing Labour leader Ed Miliband’s father of ‘hating Britain’ and leaving an ‘evil’ legacy has been the recipient of 32 complaints to the Press Complaints Commission.
A heated debate has sprung up between the newspaper, which insists it is justified in making the claims, and the Labour party which accuses the title of attempting to ‘smear’ the Miliband family.
It follows a war of words between former spin doctor Alastair Campbell and the Mail’s deputy editor, Jon Steafel on the BBC’s Newsnight over the articles heading: ‘The man who hated Britain…’
This prompted Campbell to say: “There is no credible argument in the article or evidence from his life which can remotely justify the lurid headline.”
But Steafel defended: “[Ralph Miliband's] views on British institutions from our schools to our royal family, to our military to our universities, to the Church to our great newspapers ... what he said was that he felt that all of those things were bad aspects, were unfortunate aspects of British life...
"If you take those things together and you combine them with an espousing of a Marxist ideology, that in our view represented someone who hated British values.”
Ed Miliband himself has not complained directly to the PCC.